Doomed to Fail - Can you recommend a Medieval History podcast?

Episode Date: July 9, 2025

Traditionally, the Middle Ages (which is easier to spell) is the time from the 5th century to the fall of Constantinople in 1453. We could also pull it a little later into the birth of the Renaissance, and we might as well bookend this with the Mona Lisa.The space between the Nika Riots and the Mona Lisa is about 1000 years, and a lot happened.🏛 Early Medieval (c. 500–1000 CE)532 - The Nika Riots: In Constantinople, under Emperor Justinian, what starts as a sports riot turns into a full-blown class riot with many people being hacked to death in the hippodrome. It’s a bloody start to this brutal time period.Ep 12 - Part 2: Ancient Sport Rivalries - The Nika Riots890 - Olga of Kiev Born: The future Saint Olga doesn’t suffer fools—or murderers. She’ll go on to take spectacular revenge for her husband's death with fire, pit traps, and a touch of mass slaughter.Ep 129 - Mother of Sparrows: The Vengeance of Saint Olga of Kiev🏰 High Medieval (c. 1000–1300 CE)1066 - Battle of Hastings: William the Bastard becomes William the Conqueror by crushing the Anglo-Saxons. Spoiler: there’s a lot of eye-stabbing and arrow-to-the-face action.Ep 39: "I'm Alive!": William the Conqueror and the Battle of Hastings1078 - Construction begins on The Tower of London (by William the Conqueror): Built by William to intimidate Londoners, the Tower goes on to be a prison, zoo, and execution site. It’s the most iconic “doomed to fail” Airbnb of all time.Ep 157: Beheading the Myths - The Tower of LondonLet’s pop in to talk about executions here! The racks, the spikes, the dungeons - imagine Robin Hood Prince of Thieves + The Princess Bride. Ep 154: Off With Their Heads! - Medieval Executioners🕯 Late Medieval (c. 1300–1500 CE)1343 - Geoffrey Chaucer Born: The father of English literature will write The Canterbury Tales, packed with horny nuns, fart jokes, and death. Middle English never sounded so messy.Ep 174: We're men, we're men in tights (Tight tights!) - Geoffrey Chaucer 1380 - Poggio Bracciolini Born: This book-hunting humanist saves ancient texts from oblivion—right before Europe burns them again. A hero of the Renaissance, with a side of spicy gossip.Ep 125 - Book Hunting in The Renaissance: Poggio Bracciolini1381 - Peasants’ Revolt: Fed up with taxes and plague-era inequality, English peasants rise up and nearly overthrow the king. It ends, of course, with heads on pikes.Ep 172: What do you mean I can't wear drip? The Peasants' Revolt 1393 - A fiery mistake at the Ball: When the king of France and his friends dress up as “wild men” with flammable costumes, one torch turns the party into a deadly inferno.Ep 102 - The Fatal Masquerade: Bal des Ardents 1410 - First Battle of Jan Žižka: Blind in one eye and armed with war wagons, Žižka kicks off a string of battles that make him one of the only undefeated generals in history.Ep 22 - Part 2: Czech this guy out - Medieval General Jan Žižka 1496 - The Guanches Defeated: The last resistance of the Indigenous Guanches of the Canary Islands is crushed by the Spanish, marking an early and bloody step in European imperialism.Ep 70 - The People of Tenerife - The Lost Civilization of The Guanches🌅 Medieval-to-Renaissance Cusp (c. 1500–1517)1503 - Nostradamus Born: He’s born during plagues and portents—and grows up to write cryptic rhymes that somehow predict everything from Hitler to TikTok (allegedly).Ep 122 - Fire & Brimstone: Nostradamus1503 - Mona Lisa Started: Leonardo da Vinci begins painting a mysterious woman with an even more mysterious smile. Centuries later, we still can’t stop staring.Ep 85 - Mona Lisa's Journey: From Workshop to World IconTake a listen, and let us know what you think! [e-mail]! Join our Founders Club on Patreon to get ad-free episodes for life! patreon.com/DoomedtoFailPodWe would love to hear from you! Please follow along! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod  Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod Email: [e-mail] 

Hello, welcome to doomed to fail. My name is Taylor. And every week, my friend Fars and I tell stories of disasters, failures, and just things that are interesting from history that we didn't know that help explain us as humans. So when we talk about the Middle East, we're going to talk about Cyrus the Great, Iran-Contra, the terrorist attacks on planes, and the Olympics in the 1970s. We're going to try to get as much context as we can around these, you know, individual. things and places and stories. We have over 200 ad-free episodes. It's a lot to comb through, but if you like smart history and chaotic storytelling, you're definitely in the right place. So it's a little bit frameless because it's just interesting things. So to start framing the frameless, I'm going to tell you about it one topic at a time. And let's start with medieval history. So traditionally, the Middle Ages is the time from the 5th century to the time from the 5th century to the fall of Constantinople in 1453. And I'm also going to add a little bit into the birth of the Renaissance.

So we have like 10 or so episodes that cover this time period. I'm going to link them all in the show notes. You can go each of them individually, but let me tell you about them. So in our early medieval period, which is 500 to 1,000, let's start with the Nika riots in 532. So in Constantinople, there was like a sports riot, basically. It started off literally two teams of horse riders and the hippodrome, the greens and the blues and the aristocrats like the blues and the poor people like the greens. And they just start rioting and fighting. And it ends up with the entire hippodrome, which is like their stadium, just

filled with bodies and blood. And the king Justinian and his wife leave and all these things happen. And it's the beginning of a really crazy time period. then obviously i'm not hitting everything but we're going to skip to 890 when olga of keve was born so she actually turned into a saint she's now saint olga but she was a queen in keve in where ukraine is and she was avenging her husband's death and she killed so many people she tricked them into falling into pits she drowned them she burned them she took all of their birds and set them on fire and sent them back to their houses, just like real fun, real fun revenge in that one. Then let's go high medieval, 1,000 to 1,000, 1066.

If you're in the UK, you know what this is. This is the year of the Battle of Hastings. So William the bastard from France becomes William the Conqueror, comes in, takes over England. And while this was happening, the king is like in the north fighting Vikings, comes down, William the Conqueror comes in, all sorts of crazy things happen. So check that one out. Then, not that much longer. 1078, William the Conqueror starts building the Tower of London.

Still there, not a tower, actually a big building. You can see the Crown Jewels. You can see the bee feeders. We'll talk about the history of the Tower of London. And then also, we have an episode about media of the executioners, right? So rack, spikes, anything that you can think of, crazy weeks to die. Check that one out as well. Then we'll go to the late medieval period, 1,300 to 1,500.

We have 1343 is the year Jeffrey Chaucer is born. So you'll remember Chaucer from a knight's tale, if you're a millennial, and also from the Canterbury Tales. So learn about this author and how he got started. In 1380, so 40 years after, a man named Pogio Bracolini is born. He's actually going to live in Italy, obviously. And what he does is finds these ancient, text, is ancient humanist texts in libraries. So we're so lucky now that, you know,

everything is printed, everything is digital. It's easy to access books and literature and history. But back then, you had to go and he would go to monasteries and sit in these libraries and these monasteries and search for things that were ancient. And they're not like the original things. It's just a copy of a copy of a copy that happened to survive. Super interesting. So learn about Pogio. Then 1381 in England is the peasants. revolt. So obviously it's taxes and there's the plague and everyone is, you know, upset and it's actually. So after the plague in Europe, peasants realized that they were worth so much more than they were being paid. And they started to revolt because of that. When they do kind of storm into

London, they're going to walk through one of the northeast gates in London and they're going to walk underneath Jeffrey Chaucer's apartment. So he is there watching this happen, which is super exciting. Then let's go to France. 1393 is the Ball des Arzance. I'm so sorry. Ball de Ardense. I don't speak French, obviously. But this is the King of France, kind of a lunatic. And he has this big party and him and his friends dress in these costumes that are basically like hay glued to their bodies and makes them very, very flammable. And I say this a lot, but we are very lucky that we don't rely on fire for our day-to-day needs. because it is extraordinarily dangerous.

So you can learn about that. 1410 other parts of Europe, Jan Jiska, who is a Czech superhero. If you grew up in the Czech Republic, you learned about Jan Ziska for sure. He's one of the only undefeated generals in history. He did most of his fighting with one eye and eventually would be totally blinded and continue to be on the front lines. Then, the very end of this time period, 1496, on the Isle of Tenerife. So we actually talk about Tenerife, which is part of the Canary Islands outside of Spain,

because one of the biggest plane disasters in world history happened there. But way before that, 1496, the guanches were defeated by the Spanish. And they were just like a kind of a individual group of people that lived on an island, and their culture is now gone. So we can learn about them. Then the medieval to Renaissance cusp give it like 15 more years after 1,500 for this little bit of a rollover. But 1503, Noce Ramos is born. Doesn't he feel more ancient than that?

But he was born all of his, like, predictions. Remember after 9-11? Everybody was like, two brothers boasts alike and dignity, dignity, you know. But that was not true. Anyway, and we'll end with 1503. The Mona Lisa was started. So when I did the episode on the Mona Lisa, I was like, yeah, it's great, but like, why do we care about it so much? And it's super interesting.

It was, it belongs to France because Leonardo D. died in France and he had it with him. And it's famous because it was stolen. So super exciting too. Let me go back and tell you these episode numbers, just in case you're not reading the show notes. To recap, the Nika riots, episode 12, part two. Then, episode 129, Mother of Sparrow's, the vengeance of St. Olga of Kiev. Then, episode 39, I'm alive, Will you the Conqueror in the Battle of Hastings? Episode 157, Beheading the Myth the Tower of London. Episode 154, off with their heads, medieval executioners. Episode 174 were men, men in tight tight tights, Jeffrey Chaucer.

Episode 125, book hunting in the Renaissance, Poggio, Brockiolini. Episode 172, what do you mean I can't wear a drip? The Peasants Revolt. Episode 102, the fatal masquerade, the Bald de Arden. Episode 22, Part 2. Check this guy out, medieval general, Jan Ajiska. Episode 70, the people of Tenerife, the lost civilization of the Guantius. Episode 122, Fire and Bramstrom, Nostradamus. And episode 85, Mona Lisa's Journey, from Workshop to World Icon.

So if you want to learn about medieval history, check those episodes out. Let us know what you think. And I will be sharing some of our themes with you as we go. If you have any questions or ideas, email us, Doomedepilpod at gmail.com. do Defelpod on all social media platforms except Twitter and we have Patreon if you want to join and support us there too. We very much appreciate you and we hope you enjoy our collection of episodes on medieval history. Thank you.